War Memorial in Churchyard of Church of St Wulfram South Kesteven, England

Text courtesy of Historic England. © Crown Copyright, reprinted under the Open Government License.

The war memorial was built by Messrs Bowman & Sons with the sculptor Mr Phillips to the designs of Sir Charles Nicholson (1867-1949). The original plans, dated 1920, are deposited at the RIBA Drawings Collection. The memorial was unveiled by the local clergy and dignitaries in a ceremony on 27 November 1920. It is located in the churchyard of the Grade I listed Church of St Wulfram which contains the nine stone dedicatory tablets with the names of the fallen. St Wulfram’s is widely considered to be one of the most important parish churches in the country, due largely to its slender, crocketed C14 spire. The octagonal spire is set on a square tower, which in the C13 and C14 represented the most important development in the essentially vertical Early English style. The awkward join between the tower and spire was often broached, but at St Wulfram the broach is used in conjunction with corner pinnacles. These features clearly influenced Nicholson in his design for the war memorial. Nicholson was a leading ecclesiastical architect of the early C20 and has over 60 buildings on the List, many of them medieval or Victorian churches which he augmented or restored. He was articled to J. D. Sedding, one of the most prominent architects in the Victorian Gothic style, to whom he owed much of his interest and talent in church design. In 1893 he set up his own practice, winning in the same year the RIBA’s Tite prize, and he joined H. C. Corlette in partnership from 1895 to 1916. During the course of his career Nicholson designed many parish churches, using the English Gothic style with complete freedom, and was considered an authority on the design and furnishing of churches. He was consulting architect to seven cathedrals – Belfast, Lincoln, Lichfield, Llandaff, Portsmouth, Sheffield and Wells – and Diocesan Architect to Chelmsford, Portsmouth, Wakefield and Winchester. He also designed with Corlette the government buildings in Kingston, Jamaica, after the earthquake there in 1907, which probably constitutes the earliest extensive scheme of reinforced concrete buildings. In 1927 he took into partnership his chief assistant Thomas Johnston Rushton, whose son continued the practice.